Her Hands on the Keys
by Wolfstorm7
Summary: Emily's been missing since morning. While her father worries, he teaches piano to a pale little boy. -Oneshot-


Hi everyone! I wrote this in the car driving to a game lodge... HoooRay!

Got this idea from two things:

1 - Because she's been dead for a while, Emily (alive) would have been maybe 15 or 20 years older than Victor. I wanted to put them in the same story, but my other ideas were creepy. (Can you say 'cougar' much?)

2 - Where did she learn piano? She knows the same songs that Victor does. Hmm...

In the POV of Emily's father.

Anyway, as always, pretty please leave some feedback.

Enjoy :)

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><p>Considering the number of men who came courting, it wasn't a surprise that she eventually fell for one of them.<p>

Unfortunately, the act of falling was completely uncontrollable, even to the wills of Emily. Her father knew that if she could have controlled that sort of descent, she would have directed her flight towards a more worthy suitor.

Instead, he found a man with a chin as large as his chest and thrust out to the same extent, who swaggered from the armchair to the sitting table, a man like _this_ had become Emily's new object of desire.

Only a few years ago he had dismissed his daughter's governess, on the decision that Emily was almost a woman, almost as responsible.

"She needs a firm guiding hand," the governess had snipped as he escorted her out for the last time. "She's fanciful, and young love is a fool's folly." He sent her out with a yes, yes, I know my daughter. And he knew that while his daughter dreamer, she was no fool.

A thing he did not tell the governess was the age at which he and his wife had fallen in love. He certainly did not tell Emily.

Even without those subtle words of encouragement she had gone ahead and begged to marry that pompous bastard Barkis.

(What kind of father would have said yes to such a request?)

Emily's father, the former Earl, padded down the wooded hallway, his huge spindly hands pressed deep in his pockets. Those hands were certainly suited for piano playing but not as adept at being firm and guiding, it seemed.

She'd been missing since morning.

But he refused to think negatively. Perhaps she had gone for a walk at dawn and was eating lunch at a friend's house. It was improper, of course, but she was a wild horse at this age. People talked.

She couldn't be with Barkis. He told himself this and believed it. She hadn't mentioned the man for weeks, ever since Barkis's proposal had been refused by the Earl.

I know my daughter, he thought. She's no fool.

A heavy tapping at the door reminded him that he had agreed to teach the fish monger's boy piano. They would pay reasonably, as they fared well in their trade, although the Earl did not need money. He had satchels of gold in the safe along with the family jewels, passed for generations.

He opened the door and in stepped the rotund mother, dragging her tiny thin-faced boy behind her like a strung dog.

"Don't touch _anything_," he heard Mrs. Van Dort hiss to her son as they followed him down the hall. "This is a house of royalty." A moment later they were at the grand piano, which was glossy black. The boy sat at command but leaned away from the keys as if they were polished glass and his hands were wet with Indian ink.

"Come on, boy," joked the Earl. "These ivory teeth don't bite."

The boy reached out tentatively and touched the center D key without playing it.

"Well, that's a start." Emily's father chuckled. "What's your name?"

His mother said loudly, "Victor." She was at the wall examining photographs with a spectacle. "Oh, is this here your wife?"

"No," said the Earl, and felt tired. "It would be beneficial to progress to have the boy study alone…"

She hurried into the hall in a flurry of petticoat.

"Now then. How old are you?"

"Six," whispered Victor after a few moments of inhale.

"Perfect. That's the age my daughter started." The quivering worry stuck him again, he glanced at the clock, and then shoved the whole concept out of his mind. "Maybe someday you'll play as well as her."

Victor nodded. "I'd like that." He slowly pressed down on his D key until it ever-so-slightly produced a noise – a single note vibrating so faintly that it was a soft lone cry. Even so, the boy pulled away like a shock had bolted up the ivories into his fingers.

The man cleared his throat. "Would you like to hear a piece first?"

Many minutes later Victor had worked up enough courage to gently pick out a scale, and then improvise an itty tune out of a minor chord. The boy as natural with the piano as his daughter had been at her first lesson, sitting by his side and her tiny hands on the keys with his…

With that thought, he broke free from the melody Victor had plunked out and whipped towards the clock. Almost time for tea. He struggled to calm his nerves, but loose energy trundled along his extremities. His hands began to quiver.

"All right," he said with too much cheer, startling the boy. "Lesson time is over, sorry. Shall I get your mother?"

He left Victor on the bench and met Mrs. Van Dort in the hall. The woman was an even more notorious scandalmonger than a fishmonger, but the Earl was too anxious to care.

He pulled her to the side and asked, "Have you seen my daughter?"

Her mouth opened in the little circle only a gossip can perfect, and then she shook her head. "How long has she been gone?"

"I awoke and found her missing."

Victor appeared in hall like a shadow without a person. His mother dragged him to her bosom as if she expected him to sprout wings and take flight before her eyes. "I haven't seen her, but I'll keep an eye out. Children can be capricious; I'm sure she's about."

"Thank you," he said stiffly, and then turned to the boy. "Come back in a week, Victor. You're a remarkable student." The boy's thin face allowed a small smile, and then it blinked away.

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><p>Hours later, the Earl had turned to a mess of jittery legs and large twitching hands, and the sporadic shouts of the Town Crier did nothing to ease him<p>

"Have you seen Emily?" _BONG_. "Have you seen Emily?"

Yes, the word had spread, some people passing it with concern and others along poisoned tongues. He heard it from his window; their exaggerated whispers.

She ran off with Barkis.

And worse.

There wasn't a person in this town and the five next that did not already know the name of Emily, for her beauty was astounding, but these rumors were a new animal to the Earl. All these people who liked to pretend they knew Emily.

_I_ know my daughter, he thought. (His inner voice had lost conviction.)

He staggered from the window and made his way to the storeroom, and fumbled with a candle. As the room came to light, he began to relax. Mementoes of his young life were piled along the walls and suddenly overcome with a presence greater than himself, he swayed on his feet.

Voices began to whisper, the cries of spirits under the floorboards and in the walls. Altogether there was a familiar sound. He remembered the voice of his wife as she pet his feverish forehead.

The closet door was ajar. He noticed this and his breath twisted.

Then he took everything in on an inhale of dust, and coughing, he wrenched the door open and tore open the ancient boxes that lay inside.

One was full of hats. In another, delicate lace gloves. He found a lady jacket with a silver rose still pinned to the lapel. (He had bought the rose for her, he could still remember.)

Then came the box he had been dreading. He sipped off the top and found himself staring at the dusty velvet bottom.

He slumped against the door, fingers of terror clawing at his heart. He convulsed inside himself. A fool's folly, he thought. But he knew Emily! He was her father. This wasn't her, couldn't be her.

She wouldn't break him like this.

His hands were folded together as if to trap the flutter of his pulse, but he unlaced them to draw the safe key from his nightstand. Once open, it was ridiculous to pretend she had taken nothing – all the jewels were missing, along with some gold.

Candle wax streaked on his long fingers, burning. The dying light fell into the bare box again, lit the half-emptied safe as if it was trying to prove to the Earl that he could not rein wild horses, that he could never get her back.

(At only fifteen, Isabelle was beautiful in the white dress. She bounced off the marble step into his arms, giggling. The sun fell like snow on their heads and shoulders and he knew once again what it was to be in love.)

He shuffled over the whispering boards, down the stairs and past the piano. He thought he saw a small girl at the keys, and his ears filled with a haunting tune. "Father, listen."

But it was only his dirty shadow on the wall. It shook.

He threw open the door to the dim lit cobblestones. He stepped out. He leaned against the doorframe and looked into the empty dark night, and only he stood on the street

and he whispered out weakly, "Have you seen my daughter?"

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><p>Thanks for reading... reviews would be darling.<p> 


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